Terraced Gardens SydneyTurning a Slope Into Usable Levels

Why Terracing Beats One Big Wall

The instinct on a sloping block is to build one tall wall at the bottom and fill behind it. That is the most expensive way to do it: past 600mm the wall is no longer exempt development and needs a Complying Development Certificate or a DA, it carries far more load, and you finish with a single flat area and a tall blank face to look at. Terracing splits the same fall across several low walls with planted or paved levels between them. Each wall works less, and you end up with usable areas at different heights rather than one.

The levels have to be genuinely stepped back for that to hold. The exempt provisions require at least 2m horizontally between retaining walls on the same site and at least 1m from every lot boundary, so stacking them close together means neither wall is exempt, whatever their individual heights — and structurally the upper one is loading the lower. Drainage runs through the whole design as well: each terrace sheds water to the next, so the ag lines need somewhere real to discharge, and the steps between levels need to fall the right way so a downpour does not turn them into a watercourse.

Terracing on a Sydney Block